Digital Platforms Imperialism And Political Culture

In the networked twenty-first century, digital platforms have significantly influenced capital accumulation and digital culture. Platforms, such as social network sites (e.g. Facebook), search engines (e.g. Google), and smartphones (e.g. iPhone), are increasingly crucial because they function as major digital media intermediaries. Emerging companies in non-Western countries have created unique platforms, controlling their own national markets and competing with Western-based platform empires in the global markets. The reality though is that only a handful of Western countries, primarily the U.S., have dominated the global platform markets, resulting in capital accumulation in the hands of a few mega platform owners. This book contributes to the platform imperialism discourse by mapping out several core areas of platform imperialism, such as intellectual property, the global digital divide, and free labor, focusing on the role of the nation-state alongside transnational capital.

Global media expert Dal Yong Jin examines the nexus of globalization, digital media, and contemporary popular culture in this empirically rich, student-friendly book. Offering an in-depth look at globalization processes, histories, texts, and state policies as they relate to the global media, Jin maps out the increasing role of digital platforms as they have shifted the contours of globalization. Case studies and examples focus on ubiquitous digital platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix, in tandem with globalization so that the readers are able to apply diverse theoretical frameworks of globalization in different media milieu. Readers are taught core theoretical concepts which they should apply critically to a broad range of contemporary media policies, practices, movements, and technologies in different geographic regions of the world – North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia – with a view to determining how they shape and are shaped by globalization. End-of-chapter discussion questions prompt further critical thinking and research. Students doing coursework in digital media, global media, international communication, and globalization will find this new textbook to be an essential introduction to how media have influenced a complex set of globalization processes in broad international and comparative contexts.

In the networked twenty-first century, digital platforms have significantly influenced capital accumulation and digital culture. Platforms, such as social network sites (e.g. Facebook), search engines (e.g. Google), and smartphones (e.g. iPhone), are increasingly crucial because they function as major digital media intermediaries. Emerging companies in non-Western countries have created unique platforms, controlling their own national markets and competing with Western-based platform empires in the global markets. The reality though is that only a handful of Western countries, primarily the U.S., have dominated the global platform markets, resulting in capital accumulation in the hands of a few mega platform owners. This book contributes to the platform imperialism discourse by mapping out several core areas of platform imperialism, such as intellectual property, the global digital divide, and free labor, focusing on the role of the nation-state alongside transnational capital.

Digital media histories are part of a global network, and South Asia is a key nexus in shaping the trajectory of digital media in the twenty-first century. Digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and others are deeply embedded in the daily lives of millions of people around the world, shaping how people engage with others as kin, as citizens, and as consumers. Moving away from Anglo-American and strictly national frameworks, the essays in this book explore the intersections of local, national, regional, and global forces that shape contemporary digital culture(s) in regions like South Asia: the rise of digital and mobile media technologies, the ongoing transformation of established media industries, and emergent forms of digital media practice and use that are reconfiguring sociocultural, political, and economic terrains across the Indian subcontinent. From massive state-driven digital identity projects and YouTube censorship to Tinder and dating culture, from Twitter and primetime television to Facebook and political rumors, Global Digital Cultures focuses on enduring concerns of representation, identity, and power while grappling with algorithmic curation and data-driven processes of production, circulation, and consumption.

In this comprehensive volume, leading scholars of media and communication examine the nexus of globalization, digital media, and popular culture in the early 21st century. The book begins by interrogating globalization as a critical and intensely contested concept, and proceeds to explore how digital media have influenced a complex set of globalization processes in broad international and comparative contexts. Contributors address a number of key political, economic, cultural, and technological issues relative to globalization, such as free trade agreements, cultural imperialism, heterogeneity, the increasing dominance of American digital media in global cultural markets, the powers of the nation-state, and global corporate media ownership. By extension, readers are introduced to core theoretical concepts and practical ideas, which they can apply to a broad range of contemporary media policies, practices, movements, and technologies in different geographic regions of the world—North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. Scholars of global media, international communication, media industries, globalization, and popular culture will find this to be a singular resource for understanding the interconnected relationship between digital media and globalization.

This book addresses the issues raised by digital platforms in the Global South, with an emphasis on the cultural stakes involved. It brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers – including political economists, socio-economists, geographers, media sociologists or anthropologists – who each explore these issues through an insightful case study at a local, national, regional or international scale. While studying the strategies of some of the main US-based Big Tech platforms or video streaming platforms towards the Global South, the chapters also consider the often-neglected active role local or regional actors play in the expansion of those Western digital players, and highlight the existence of a constellation of local or regional platforms that have emerged in Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Middle East. In addition to analysing the complex relationships of competition, collaboration or dependence between these diverse actors, this volume examines the ways in which the rise of these digital platforms has generated new forms of cultural entrepreneurship and participated in the reconfiguring of the conditions in which cultural contents are produced and circulated in the Global South. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the transnationalisation of cultural industries or in the social, political, economic, cultural and geopolitical dimensions of digital transformations and will be an important resource for students, teachers and researchers in media, communication, cultural studies, international relations and area studies programmes.

This book offers an in-depth academic discourse on the convergence of AI, digital platforms, and popular culture, in order to understand the ways in which the platform and cultural industries have reshaped and developed AI-driven algorithmic cultural production and consumption. At a time of fundamental change for the media and cultural industries, driven by the emergence of big data, algorithms, and AI, the book examines how media ecology and popular culture are evolving to serve the needs of both media and cultural industries and consumers. The analysis documents global governments’ rapid development of AI-relevant policies and identifies key policy issues; examines the ways in which cultural industries firms utilize AI and algorithms to advance the new forms of cultural production and distribution; investigates change in cultural consumption by analyzing the ways in which AI, algorithms, and digital platforms reshape people’s consumption habits; and examines whether governments and corporations have advanced reliable public and corporate policies and ethical codes to secure socio-economic equality. Offering a unique perspective on this timely and vital issue, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in media studies, communication studies, anthropology, globalization studies, sociology, cultural studies, Asian studies, and science and technology studies (STS).

The 2012 smash "Gangnam Style" by the Seoul-based rapper Psy capped the triumph of Hallyu , the Korean Wave of music, film, and other cultural forms that have become a worldwide sensation. Dal Yong Jin analyzes the social and technological trends that transformed South Korean entertainment from a mostly regional interest aimed at families into a global powerhouse geared toward tech-crazy youth. Blending analysis with insights from fans and industry insiders, Jin shows how Hallyu exploited a media landscape and dramatically changed with the 2008 emergence of smartphones and social media, designating this new Korean Wave as Hallyu 2.0. Hands-on government support, meanwhile, focused on creative industries as a significant part of the economy and turned intellectual property rights into a significant revenue source. Jin also delves into less-studied forms like animation and online games, the significance of social meaning in the development of local Korean popular culture, and the political economy of Korean popular culture and digital technologies in a global context.